


without bound

by pendules



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-04
Updated: 2011-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-19 00:22:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steven Gerrard, his Liverpool, the Prem. 08/09 season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	without bound

Stevie dreams. Stevie dreams, not of the past, the last of the Spice Boys or the start of the Rafalution (or before before _before_ ), but the future. Stevie dreams of the Premiership.

Stevie dreams. He used to dream. He knows nothing else.

 

 

Stevie knows about priorities, knows how they change. It's different when you're a kid. It's different when you can think, _this is all there is_ , and be completely, undeniably right. It's different when you age along with the planet and there's so much; there's death, there's life (love).

Somehow, somehow, on cold days, when it feels so close, so close, like the next word he's about to speak, the next way he's going to express how much he wants it, needs it, as a captain, as all that he is (and this, this is who they are, who they are supposed to be: a player, part of a bigger picture on the field, but a human being too, on it and off), it feels exactly the same as when he used to hide in the back of buses, stifling laughter, waiting to be discovered.

 

 

Football attracts not those who want glory, but the ones who are attracted to running, running away, escaping. Football attracts those who love it, who understand it. It's supposed to be simple. But it never was. Or if it is, it changes, whether you have it or you lose it, whether you live it or you watch someone else do. It starts as everything there is, but you start to realise that, it, this, this sport of eleven men and running legs, was made to be simple, and that it's about what it represents, what overshadows it sometimes (all the time): the humanity, the belief in something greater that one person or one age of the earth, greater than this moment we have now, the one in which we could be (are) simply happy, the one they would (will) remember until we die and beyond. It's about us, about one person, on one level, but somehow can reach the corners of the earth. (Somehow, it's at the same level though: the world sees you as what you are, a man, like any other, a _man_ most importantly. This is, in the end, the reason for it all.)

At first, you make football (when you're young, when you dream of what could be and how it will be), but eventually, football makes you.

Just like life. Simple.

 

 

 _Simple._ If it was simple, it would go like this:

You want. You dream. There are aches in the hearts of thousands of men (and he, he is their captain, their only one). Aches like vibrations running from the core outward. Aches that are able to influence the shape of the earth. Aches that turn to tremors that turn to _violence_ , to the world itself shaking, fracturing along lines that have been plotted on the bottom of the ocean by a strategic hand. The quake creates a devastating wave. The wave brings it home, to you, to the hearts that created it.

 

 

But it's not so easy. You have to go out there for ninety minutes (run for ninety minutes; this, you've signed up for—this is the simple part) and feel the frustration, feel everything that is nothing. But without this, there _is_ nothing. Each second of each minute is something, and you realised that years ago. You have to. You have to endure, and feel it for what it is. Right now, right now, it may not seem like much, not on the larger scale, but it's always, _always_ one match at a time, and it's important. It's not everything. It may be the best at times, or the worst, the worst (never, never), but there's more. There's more, more, and you don't like to lose (you hate it), but sometimes, there are things that are not about winning.

 

 

People die. They leave. Some are scarred for life, _scared_ for life. There are ways of running away and ways of being destroyed. People have stories: some are unwritten or feel like it; some are over (the end); some are only beginning. Life starts and the world spins one more time and it happens again. We are in sync and we are not. Sometimes, you can never, ever understand. Sometimes, you can love regardless. Sometimes, love is the only thing you know or will ever know (for children, for parents, for this place, here, where I was born, for someone you are not supposed to love, for someone you will never meet).

The world, it's out there, outside the stadium and outside your mind, outside the things that may be holding you back, outside the limits (and there _are_ no limits; they do not exist for you, because your influence and your story can reach the ends of the earth).

People, they leave. Things change. But sometimes, they come back.

(There is risk, always. But always, too, there is hope. It's not the fear that drives us; it's the hope.)

 

 

And so they start, start each match like it's the beginning of something great (and they become so because of it), and end them the same way. Whether it's a goal at the eighty-fifth minute or a penalty converted in extra time, or safety, _safety_ (it's alright to have this, too, sometimes—though Stevie likes the rush and won't admit it: won't admit he enjoys it, that it's that simple sometimes, because he's always been about the meaning _behind_ the meaning), playing safe, unlike their style (not recklessness but an inspired sort of submission to fate—and fate, it appears, more often than not, is on their side).

 

 

Football attracts the ones who are attracted to running. But he's never left. Many have never left. Some that have have made their way back home.

 

 

They lose, after all, eventually. Stevie hates it and football is bitter that day (it changes, as you age with the world; you start off loving it for the simple game it is, but it makes you, after all, and not the other way around). But, and this is what they've always done, they carry on. They do it like it's a clean slate again. They do it because they have to, because it's not only about them, because football, it's not everything, but the world that is watching, hoping, waiting, waiting for number nineteen or waiting for _you_ , hearts aching, _is_.

**Author's Note:**

>  _It's only when you realise how many people follow the club, how many people you have the ability to make happy, that you know you have to win. Nothing else._ \- Steven Gerrard


End file.
